text | Linghu Boguang
just saw a piece of news. On January 29, some news announced that it had reached an exclusive cooperation with Stephen Chow on high-quality micro short dramas. The two parties will jointly develop and operate "9527 Theater", the first high-quality micro short drama. The first season of "Golden Pig and Jade Leaf" is expected to be launched on Douyin in May this year.
According to this news, Stephen Chow will join forces with outstanding young creators as the founder to create content directly for users based on the Douyin account of "Director Stephen Chow's Works".
This sentence in the news is actually the key. It’s just Stephen Chow’s name. The director is a young creator, and then uses Stephen Chow’s account to publish micro-short plays. It is difficult to guarantee the quality of the work. At the same time, those who want to watch "Star "Master" will show up, or there is a high probability that Mr. Xing's unconstrained works will satisfy your feelings and you will be disappointed.
This is not me being alarmist. Do you still remember that there was an American animated TV series "The Monkey King" produced by Stephen Chow in 2023? What about its quality, reputation, and results? Although the forms of micro-short plays are different, their production follows the same model because it is a form of collaboration between young directors. This work of
is most likely to be like the animated "Capsule Project", "Chinese Tales", "Big World Gacha Machine" co-produced by Ning Hao and others, etc. It depends on the personal level of the young director.
Will Stephen Chow finish filming a "micro-short drama"? The late festival is not guaranteed, or it is too profitable
How popular are micro-short dramas in the past two years? I believe that many netizens should have seen such news at one time or another. The micro-short drama "Mi Meng Rui Rebirth" earned 1.8 Billion, and then was removed from the shelves due to content issues. Then at the end of 2023, China’s short dramas are harvesting the European and American markets. Reelshort has been downloaded 2.25 million times in October, generating approximately US$3.5 million in revenue.
and then the higher-ups took action to rectify micro-short dramas, which resulted in a large number of micro-short dramas being removed from the shelves.
Why many big stars have started filming mini-series, including Stephen Chow, in the final analysis is because it is too profitable. After all, mobile apps are increasingly replacing movies, TV series, etc. as the main form of media communication. They represent traffic, and behind the traffic is hot money. If there is more hot money, it will naturally attract people.
The market size is expected to reach 100 billion in 2027. The annual box office of Chinese movies is only about 60 billion . Look at the struggle in the film industry. It goes without saying how profitable and attractive such a nearly 100-billion-dollar market is.
At the same time, its cost is still very low. At present, the process of almost all micro-short dramas is: invest hundreds of thousands to hundreds of thousands, complete the filming within a week to a month, and then release the slices on platforms such as a certain music platform. When "hooking people", the audience is guided to pay to unlock the remaining content on their own WeChat mini program. Models such as
have created "myths" such as "Mr. Fu's vest can't be hidden after a flash marriage" with a 24-hour recharge exceeding 20 million yuan, or the God of War drama "Wushuang" with a recharge exceeding 100 million yuan in 8 days.
"Seven days of filming and production, eight days of earning over 100 million yuan, and ten days of getting rich on the spot" are happening in reality. With the popularity of short dramas, Hengdian is now crowded with crews filming micro-short dramas, and Hengdian is about to be renamed "Zhudian".
Although many micro-short dramas have been removed from the shelves due to the above-mentioned rectification, the producers of short dramas continue to make money against the trend. Short video platforms are also constantly exploring the business model of micro-short dramas, which cannot be stopped.
From martial arts, cartoons to games? Now the real "spiritual opium" is here.
You can't stop watching this short video. I believe everyone knows its mechanism without introducing it. The dragon king, son-in-law, and Cinderella slap in the face model has been tried and tested. This is the real opiate of the mind, but this time it’s adults, not young people, who are taking the bait. At first it was martial arts novels, then comics, then stand-alone games, then online games, then mobile games, then short videos, and now short plays.
The current micro-short dramas are a weedy field. Many short dramas are priced unreasonably. There are more than 100 episodes in one drama, and each episode is a little more than a minute. Unlocking an episode costs 1-3 yuan.Moreover, the user group is basically middle-aged. For women, it is sadomasochism and conflicts between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. For men, it is the god of war and makes you rich overnight. Occupations such as security guards and delivery workers are all stereotypes in the drama.
This kind of short drama just does whatever the subject matter is popular. There is no market supervision, it is shoddy, and it uses extremely emotional content to trick the audience into paying. This is not a willing fight or a willing suffering. Market supervision is to protect the bottom line, otherwise this kind of plot will be all kinds of pornography, gambling and drugs.
The market for short dramas is obviously created by film and television dramas. Some high-quality female short dramas can compete with TV dramas and online dramas produced by some celebrities, and the difference in content is not big. The Chinese market is huge, and the scale of the entertainment industry has yet to be discovered, but those people have no interest in developing or tapping the market.
From the perspective of the crowd structure of small program short dramas, the majority are middle-aged people from a lower class. The so-called coolness and brainlessness are just because they take advantage of the weaknesses of human nature. Even if they use the review of TV dramas to demand small programs, small programs will still not die. Even in three to five years, the content will be roughly comparable to the scale of TV series.
Because traditional film and television dramas have almost given up on the middle-aged and elderly market, even the youth market is still playing in the idol economy. Mini programs currently have higher content requirements than film and television dramas playing in the idol economy, but after all, in the initial stage, it is inevitable falling into path dependency.
is also benefited from the new media platform with Douyin as the main body. This is an audience group that traditional film and television drama platforms cannot match, and can cover users of all ages in multiple dimensions.
capital is profit-seeking and will only choose the simplest and most effective method. The reason why so many people suffer from short videos is because the cost and benefits of shooting short videos are far superior to traditional film and television works. The film and television market has been around for many years. If good money could be used to drive out bad money, there would be no junk movies and TV series. The amount of time you spend polishing a work will be exhausted by others. Before the rise of
short videos, everyone watched long videos, which became popular because of their excitement and freshness.
Let me give you an inappropriate example. The policy has changed. Cinemas have private rooms where you can watch the latest action movies from the island country. The ticket price is three times that of ordinary 2D movies, and people will go to see them. But this method will not allow screenwriters and directors to polish their works, but will only find ways to make domestic action movies to seize the market.
micro-short drama became popular, are movies and TV series in danger? It’s not
how to define spiritual opium. If it doesn’t have a negative impact on life, I don’t think it is necessary to call it spiritual opium. Some people just like to watch earthy short dramas, while others like to read online novels, watch various variety shows, and chase stars. . It’s just personal choice. It’s easy to get bored after watching the same genre for a long time, and then look for the next novel target.
The rise of short videos now means that short plays are also likely to explode. Short plays of two minutes to one minute are actually short videos with a large number of actors and professional editing and photography. If accompanied by explanations, they can be turned into sliced movies. Coupled with some specially-made music and songs, this market is definitely promising, and can create employment for screenwriters, arrangers, actors, costumers, lighting, etc.
is also particularly suitable for platforms and external publicity. It is a very broad space with great potential.
Actually, I think part of the reason for the trend of shorter videos is that due to the development of the Internet, the information is too large to be viewed. There are 996 people working, and those studying are tired. It’s past ten o’clock when I get home from get off work. I can only take a shower and go to bed. I can only take out takeaways for meals, so finish your meals quickly! There are only breaks for eating and ten minutes on the toilet every day.
Who can tell me how to read "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and how to appreciate "A Dream of Red Mansions" in such a broken time? It is people's lifestyle that determines culture, not culture that determines people's lifestyle.
I think the biggest problem with micro-short dramas is that they only retain the "routine" image and not the artistic and contemporary value. That is, in the end, there is nothing except the Dragon King, the extra son-in-law, the scheming mother-in-law, the slap-in-the-face mistress and the God of War.
micro-short dramas are often shoddy, with too many logical loopholes in the plot, and they are not in line with normal human feelings and morals, and the meaning cannot be explained. My biggest feeling is that those works and the characters in the drama are undoubtedly one-sided, extreme and flat. , over time they do not treat the people in their lives as specific people, but as characters in a play.
Regardless of this, these short plays give up the observation of life and the accumulation of creation. They are just a collage of popular culture. Whatever is popular may be staged on the app tomorrow. Wouldn’t bad money drive out good ones? currency? Combined with its extremely addictive nature, there will ultimately be nothing left but traffic.
Don’t you think it is quite similar to the previous traffic economy? Idol still has a face, but now he has almost no face.
Will Stephen Chow finish filming a "micro-short drama"? He is at least 10 years late.
In fact, micro-short dramas have been around for a long time. I still remember Wanhe Tianyi's "Unexpectedly" and Dapeng's "The Man with Hanging Silk". They were all leftovers from play. . The current popularity is mainly due to platform issues. On the other hand, feature film producers are now short of money and cannot afford to assemble feature film crews, so many are forced into the short drama circle, seizing the window period of feature films to output wildly. That’s all.
The second point is that after Penguin and the above, web articles can no longer grab the traffic of short videos. They have begun to penetrate the short video industry. If they can’t grab your traffic, they will use it. In fact, there is a third point, which is that Byte has conquered overseas territories, but in fact, domestic growth has begun to slow down.
Because the original short video had no room for new growth due to volume limitations, and Li Jiaqi was also affected by the impact, so he started to create short plays. The biggest problem with short plays is not the cost, but the size that limits the subject matter. If you had a lot of money to make a science fiction film, would you make it into a short play?
Therefore, the final subject matter will definitely be limited to the controllable range of its size. It will only be those of the Dragon King. The problem is that what should the audience do if they see too much and become aesthetically tired?
Judging from the popularity of gpt last year, I think the next spiritual crow of pop culture will probably be AI actors acting in TV series or movies instead of real people. In a sense, this has already begun. Isn’t it strange to everyone? There are many actors, especially actresses, in TV dramas. Why are their appearances in the drama so different from those in reality?
Because many TV series use frame-by-frame p-pictures, in a sense, what you are watching is not a real person, but also a picture converted by AI. Now that AI technology is gradually maturing, it may not be long before AI can replace real actors. By then, the voice and appearance will be Who can resist an AI actor with a perfect figure?
ai+Shaolin Kung Fu+Movies and TV Dramas: Do you think you have done anything
